WhatsApp co-founder tells Facebook users to delete their accounts

NEW DELHI: It seems that the trouble surrounding Facebookis not going to end anytime soon. The company is right now dealing with the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and now WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton has asked his Twitterfollowers to delete Facebook.

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He tweeted, “It is time. #deletefacebook.” Acton has about 21,000 followers on Twitter. It is still not clear as to why Acton has asked to delete Facebook.

The social networking giant acquired WhatsApp in the year 2014 for $16 billion from Jan Koum and Brian Acton. Koum continued to lead the company, however, Acton left in order to start his own foundation.

This is not the first time that a former Facebook executive has showed discomfort after leaving the company. Last year, another former executive Chamath Palihapitiya accused the company by saying, “we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” And recently, the reports of Facebook’s security chief leaving the company also started doing rounds on the internet. As reported by Reuters, “The social media company has already taken away Stamos’ responsibilities to counter government-sponsored disinformation.”

Facebook came under fire earlier this week when the data of over 50 million Facebook users was leaked. It also started in 2014, when an academic of Russian origin Aleksandr Kogan created a Facebook app which paid thousands of users to take a psychological test. The app asked the users for the personal details of their Facebook friends. Then Kogan sold the same data to a company called Cambridge Analytica, which a voter profiling company in US.

Kogan violated the Facebook policy by selling the data as the app was not allowed to use the data for commercial purposes. After learning this, Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica and Kogan but it also came under scanner and started receiving criticism from various sectors.